


hither comes my beloved

by GodmotherToClarion



Series: Sped By Flame [6]
Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alternate Universe - Splash Free, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Happy Ending, M/M, Marriage, Nagisa is immortal, Parenthood, aka safe from the madness, and a chill pill for Rei, bc Gou brought sanity to the gene pool, best boy Makoto, but doesn't he always, haru needs a nap, momo needs to CALM DOWN, someone get Haru a tissue, that's right he's the bride's father, toraichi matsuoka is a troll, where even is Seijurou??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 06:39:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16948905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodmotherToClarion/pseuds/GodmotherToClarion
Summary: In which Milad's wedding day is very nearly a disaster, courtesy of his smitten parents and a scheming Toraichi Matsuoka.(Or: Haru and Makoto are just as madly in love at forty as they were at twenty-one, and Rei really needs a vacation).





	hither comes my beloved

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hapgen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hapgen/gifts).



> This is Part 6 of the Sped by Flame AU, but as usual you don't need to read the previous works in the series. Just a note for the kids: Haru and Makoto are married and have one son, Milad; Rei and Nagisa have a daughter called Noor, while Rin has a son named Toraichi and a daughter, Ami. Milad is engaged to Seijurou and Gou's daughter Aisha, and Hashad is Momo's eldest son. 
> 
> Aki is Haru's older cousin, and emperor of Iwatobi.

At nineteen years of age, Haru had never realized―nor even imagined―that he might be a father some day. 

The notion was wholly foreign to him, much as the thought of marriage was: marriage and fatherhood were the business of men far older than he, and better suited for his cousin Aki than for Haru himself. Aki had not been engaged until he was twenty-two, and Haru had expected his own fate to lead him as Aki’s had―but a month after his nineteenth birthday he found himself removed from the land of his birth to a kingdom half a thousand miles away, and newly betrothed to a girl so young that she had not yet begun her higher studies. 

And the very week he arrived in Qasr, he found himself departing a sweetshop with a black-haired baby cradled to his breast in a sling―a baby who had claimed his heart with the first firm grasp of small fingers on the hem of his robe, and who thereafter was recognized from East to West as Haruka Nanase’s son. 

* * *

“Hush, sweetheart,” whispered Makoto, plaiting a pair of gold ribbons into his sleeves. “Oh, darling.”

“I ca-can’t help it,” blubbered Haru, burying his face in the lining of the curtains before Makoto came to his side to give him a kerchief. “ _ Makoto― _ ”

He fell into his husband’s embrace and cried with a vengeance, sniffling like a child until the door to their bedroom opened before a tall youth dressed all in green and silver. At the sight of him Haru burst into tears again, reaching for Milad’s shoulders to steady himself as the lad bent down to kiss his brow. 

“Not again, mama,” he said fondly, pushing Haru to the washroom and lighting the flame under the hot-water kettle. “It will do you ill to cry so.”

“Aye, again,” sobbed the Westerner, plunging his face into the basin. “You will be twice as bad when your own children are wed, just you watch.”

“Didn’t Aunt Kazumi say the same when you and Makoto were married?” asked Rei, popping into the chamber with Nagisa at his heels. “She would laugh like anything to see you now, Haru.”

“She  _ will _ , if I cannot dry my face before we go belowstairs,” grumbled Haru. “Give me a cloth and a bottle of kohl, Milad. I look more like a mourner than the bridegroom’s father.”

"And a rag for your eyes," clucked Makoto, holding a strip of linen under the pump before laying it over his husband's lashes. "You know they trouble you after crying, jaanya. We are not so young as we used to be." 

"Speak for yourself," sang Nagisa, who was just as limber and golden-haired at thirty-nine as he had been at eighteen. "I have not had to leave off dancing yet, and I don't intend to go until I am fifty at the least. But whom are you weeping for, Haru-chan? It is Milad and Aisha both, is it not?"

“It is for myself,” muttered the prince, dabbing at his eyes until they began to cool. “That I spent the last two moons slaving for this marriage, and that the moment Toraichi knows he is in love with Noor I shall have to do it again.”

“Peace!” cried Rei, kissing the top of Nagisa’s head and flinging a shawl at his brother. “Do not you speak of marriage and my daughter in the same breath, Haru. She is far too young for such, only just eighteen, and Tora is the greatest fool I’ve ever known after Momo.”

“That is true,” mused Haru. “But women do not mind foolishness in the ones they love, if Sakura and Jun are anything like the rest―oh, Goddess, it is later than I thought. Go put on your overgown, Milad. We shall have to begin the procession before long.”

Milad obeyed and went without a word, leaving his parents and uncles in the bedroom to finish washing and dressing. A minute later he loosed an indignant shriek that brought Makoto running to the parlor with Rei and Nagisa behind him; it appeared that Toraichi and Hashad had broken into the inner room and stolen Milad’s wedding-slippers. 

“Tora!” he roared, slapping at his friend with a beaded pillow until Toraichi shrieked and sprang out into the corridor. “What in the Goddess’s name?”

“It’s tradition!” yelled Hashad, dodging Milad’s hands as he ran after his cousin. “You were the one who wanted to keep the Western customs, weren’t you?”

“I meant the _lauha!”_ screamed Milad. “Toraichi Matsuoka, if you don’t come back this instant―”

“You’ll never catch me!” came Tora’s voice, followed by a storm of laughter from Hashad’s sister Roshan. “You’re too slow,  _ onii-chan! _ ”

“Oh, I will give you  _ onii-chan _ ,” Milad muttered an oath and tore down the hall after the younger boys, lifting the hem of his robe above his bare feet as Tora threw the shoes out the window to a sentry waiting in the garden. “Tora, you fiend!”

"Are you sure he is old enough to marry?" sighed Rei. "He does know Toraichi took the spare pair, doesn't he?"

"It was his own fault for telling him that the bride’s brothers steal the bridegroom’s shoes in Iwatobi," said Haru, shrugging. "Natsuya and Ikuya did the same to Aki, you remember. And we helped. It is Milad’s duty as the son of a Western prince to endure it, in my opinion.”

"Nay, Tora took the wedding shoes by mistake," groaned Makoto, coming out of Milad's room with a gaudier pair of slippers under his arm. "He left the second pair under the bed, though I would not put it past him to have done it on purpose." 

"Wasn't he going to throw them into the pond?" asked a girl dressed all in blue, putting her head into the parlor to see where her parents had gone. "That's what Ami said he was going to do, anyway."

"I paid sixteen  _ mallas _ for those slippers," yelped Nagisa, pushing Makoto the side and taking off after Milad. "Somebody stop him―Noor, sweetheart, run and fetch Rin." 

"He's stuck in the stables," said Noor cheerfully. "He locked himself into one of the empty stalls while he was fetching the saddle for Milad’s horse, and Toraichi shut the doors so nobody could hear him shout." 

"Then let him out!" cried Rei, putting his head in his hands. "And oh, Noor! the pick of the palace lads, and you set your sights on Tora―" 

"I sent Gulshan to fetch the key, Papa," she assured him. "But the little ones are missing, and nobody has seen them since breakfast." 

Haru turned away and sighed into his drying-cloth; it had not escaped Rei that his daughter had said nothing to his aside about Toraichi, and stricken by the flush on Noor’s round cheeks the physician had grown as red as a rose. 

"I am going to have a bath," announced the prince, pointing his laughing niece to the door. "Nobody is to call for me until Milad is well and truly married. Now go away, all of you."

"I do not think they can," observed Makoto, cocking an ear in the direction of the staircase. "It sounds as if Aunt Azar is murdering Momo in the kitchens."

"Oh, no," groaned Rei. "He was to mind the little ones until the beginning of prayers―what on earth has he done now? And where is Ami?"

His query was answered scarcely a second later, in the form of a redheaded scholar dashing up the steps and towards the sultan’s chambers. At the sight of the maiden her uncles often found themselves blinking, realizing too late that she was not her mother; Ami resembled Sakura exactly, and save for her pointed eyeteeth there was nothing of Rin about her. 

"I found the babies!" she screamed, running past them with a giggling tot on her back and two more clinging to her shoulders. "Lock the door, Uncle Haru! Aunt Azar is after me!"

"Oh, dear," said Rei mournfully. "I should have stayed in Iwatobi."

“No, you shouldn't have," countered the emperor of that kingdom, bounding into the room in nothing but his underclothes. "I am perfectly content for all of this trouble to remain as far away from Sahrastan as can be." 

"Where are your clothes, Aki?" sighed Rei, looking very much as if he would like to go back to bed. 

"Toraichi stole them," said Aki cheerfully. "He broke the latch on my door whilst Jun and I were asleep and tried to tell me it was a Sahrastani custom―before he remembered that I am the Emperor of Iwatobi, at least. I believe he realized when he was halfway down the corridor, but then he was too frightened to come back."

"It is not Rin that Tora takes after, you know," whispered Nagisa, leaning close to Aki's ear. "It is Sakura. But we have never told her so, for we prefer our necks attached to our shoulders."

"Why didn't I let Rin beat me to a pulp all those years ago?" sobbed the medic. "Then Sakura would never have married him, and Toraichi Matsuoka would never have tried to feed my spectacles to a bull." 

"That was Tora?" asked Haru. "I thought you said you dropped them into the pen."

“I was softhearted at twenty-eight, Haru! Sakura would have given him the scolding of his life if she knew he had done it, and now I wish she had," fumed Rei, glaring round at them all. “Who was it who thought to bring him to Sahrastan last summer, anyway? I swear to the Goddess―”

"It was you, Rei-chan," said Nagisa, reappearing at this juncture with the pilfered slippers stuffed into his girdle. "He pouted at you, and you burst into tears and begged Sakura to send him."

"How do you think I escaped my lessons so often at home?" muttered Haru. "I had but to shed a tear, and Rei would leave his books and follow me into whatever mischief I liked."

"Well, we have the slippers again," called Makoto, taking the shoes from Nagisa and returning them to Milad's dressing table. "There is that, at least. And Ran and Ren will see to Azar, if Momo has not angered her too greatly." 

"But we've lost the bridegroom," Nagisa pointed out. “Tora and Hashad were running toward the gates to the lower town last I saw them, and Milad was close on their tail.”

“Perhaps Aisha won’t notice,” suggested Aki. “My Hana has dark hair―let her play Milad to-day, and when he is found we shall have him sign the papers.”

Haru snorted. 

“We shall have him do nothing of the sort,” he snapped, setting his palms on Aki’s shoulders and pushing him out into the hall. “Go fetch Milad at once, and for Heaven’s sake put a gown on.”

Aki winked and departed with Rei and Nagisa, leaving the two crown princes alone as Makoto threw himself onto the divan and sighed. 

“Has it truly been twenty-one years, Haru?”

“I can scarcely believe it,” murmured the Western, answering Makoto’s embrace with a kiss upon his forehead. “It seems only yesterday I was sitting by the hearth and feeding Milad from a bottle, and today he is to be married. Can you imagine it, my darling?”

“My back has not let me forget the time, dearheart,” laughed the Qasrian. “But to me he shall always be the baby you called your little goldfish, splashing about in a water-kettle because he was frightened of his bathtub.”

They lay there together for a little while after that, thinking as one of a toddling child curled behind a flour-sack, and then of a six-year-old learning to chart the heavens―of a boy of fifteen, bright-eyed and red-cheeked as he flew to his father’s defense in Martulah―of a young man wearing a lover’s girdle at twenty, on bended knee before Seijurou’s daughter as he asked for her hand in marriage. 

“What grace have I, that I was ever so blessed?” whispered Haru, kissing his husband again. “I would forsake every title save that of Milad’s  _ aita _ , and so would you.”

“Aye, I would,” came the reply. “But I would keep the one that marks me as Lord Haruka’s beloved, if it be his will.”

“It shall always be my will,” vowed the younger prince, wrapping his arms round Makoto’s waist and setting his head on his shoulder. “Until my spirit is unmade at the Forge, and after.”

“For as long as we live, and beyond the shades of death,” smiled the other, recalling Haru’s wedding-oaths as he heard them twenty years previously. “Until―”

“ _ Haru! _ ” screeched Rin from the corridor, pounding on the lath with all his might as the princes tumbled to the floor. “Oh, Goddess―cannot the both of you wait until evening to woo one another again? Milad is dressed in his wedding robes and standing on the terrace with his horse, and I shall not have my niece alone at the temple because her kings-in-waiting saw fit to delay her marriage!”

With that the bridegroom’s fathers glanced at one another and fled to the bedchamber, pulling on their festival-gowns and adorning their throats with jewels so swiftly that Makoto nearly forgot his circlet and the golden chains that Haru wore in his hair. Once they were dressed they flung back the door and threw on their slippers, running down to the gardens with Rin marching crossly before them. They paused in the entrance hall, stopping to pay their respects to the red-haired bride and her weeping mother and father (Seijurou had surely never cried so much in his life, Haru thought) and kissing all three for luck before going to the kitchen courtyard where Milad sat astride his mare with half the army and all his cousins for escort.

“Shall we begin, my love?” murmured Makoto, taking Haru’s hand in his as they stepped out into the sun. “Will you walk with me?”

“Unto the world’s ending,  _ jaanya, _ ” whispered Haru, meeting his husband’s leaf-green eyes with cobalt washed by tears. “Wherever you choose to roam.”

* * *

_ And no less of a marvel was Haru’ undying love, for Makoto belonged to the prince in his arms as rays belonged to the sun, so far beyond fear and question that doubt never touched him at all―but the answering cry within Haruka’s breast was a rainstorm sung into life, a deity’s bliss at the humble oath with which his bridegroom had blessed him. In all his days he had not hoped to know such joy as this, and now it had come upon him he threw back his head and wept until his cheeks were damp with the mingled salt of their tears. _

_ * _ __ _ * _ __ _ * _

_ hither comes my beloved _

_ dark-eyed and slender, _

_ lively and weary both.   _

_ I take one kiss from his ruddy lips, _

_ and head-tilted and laughing, he whispers: _

_ my darling! walk forth with me! _

 


End file.
